The deaths of two Guatemalan children in US government custody have sparked outrage and cast a spotlight on the treatment of immigrants detained by authorities.
Felipe Gómez Alonzo, an eight-year-old boy, died on Christmas Eve. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) subsequently ordered medical checks on every child in its custody. The boy had been moved through at least four holding facilities and suffered from a fever and vomiting.
Weeks earlier, Jakelin Caal, a seven-year-old Guatemalan girl who crossed the border with her father, died less than two days after being apprehended by the border patrol.
The two children are not the only immigrants to die in 2018 in custody, either in CBP facilities or at detention centers run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
In May, a 19-month-old girl, Mariee Juárez, died weeks after being released from a family detention center in Dilley, Texas. Her mother, Yazmin Juárez, who traveled from Guatemala with her daughter, is suing the government, saying poor medical care at the facility led to her daughter’s death.
The baby girl was healthy when she arrived at Dilley but she developed a fever of 104.2F, vomiting and diarrhea while there, according to the complaint. She spent weeks at New Jersey hospitals after the family was released but doctors were unable to save her.
A five-month-old girl from Honduras who traveled with the migrant caravan was hospitalized with pneumonia after spending days in a freezing cell at a border facility, her mother told BuzzFeed. The baby survived.
At least 12 people have died in Ice custody at adult detention centers this year, according to information released by Ice and compiled by the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
The cases include:
Mergensana Amar, a 40-year-old Russian national, died in November when he was removed from life support 11 days after trying to kill himself in his cell at the Northwest Detention Center. Amar tried to hang himself after being removed from a brief suicide watch that began when guards found a rope under his bed, according to the Washington Post. Amar had participated in a hunger strike; he died in the same month he was scheduled to be deported. “I would prefer to die on this soil than go back to Russia,” he told a Human Rights Watch researcher, according to a report on the news site Crosscut.
Zeresenay Ermias Testfatsion, 34 of Eritrea, died in an apparent suicide at an Egyptian airport, as he was being transported back to his home country. Testfatsion was found dead in a shower area in June while in detention at Cairo international airport, according to Ice. He was arrested at the Hidalgo, Texas, border crossing and had sought asylum, saying he was afraid to return to his country.
Roxana Hernández, a transgender woman from Honduras, died in May in Ice custody in New Mexico. She was hospitalized with symptoms of pneumonia, dehydration and complications associated with HIV. Her death prompted protests, with civil rights groups calling her treatment negligent. “During her first week in the United States, Roxy’s body and spirit quickly deteriorated,” said the immigrant rights groups Pueblo Sin Fronteras, Al Otro Lado and Diversidad Sin Fronteras. “Roxy died due to medical negligence by US immigration authorities.”
Yulio Castro-Garrido, 33, a Cuban national, died after being found to have pneumonia and slipping into a coma. His family asked for an investigation, saying he was healthy before being locked up at a detention center in Georgia. “It is just so unfair that he went there in full health, full of dreams, full of everything that an immigrant has to be better in this country and he just came out as a dead body,” his brother, Frank Suarez Garrido, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Huy Chi Tran, 47, died at a detention center in Arizona while awaiting deportation to Vietnam. He was a legal permanent resident of the US, but had been ordered deported following a conviction for aggravated assault.
A Human Rights Watch report released in June found that in more than half of the 15 deaths in Ice custody it reviewed, which occurred from from December 2015 through April 2017, inadequate medical care contributed or led to the death.
